


Have Yourself a Harry Christmas Part 0.5

by mixedwithintellect



Series: Saint Nicholas Verse [10]
Category: Don't Let Me Go - Harry Styles (Song), Kiwi - Harry Styles (Song), Medicine - Harry Styles (Song), One Direction (Band), Sweet Creature - Harry Styles (Song)
Genre: Angst, Christmas AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 09:39:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16093013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mixedwithintellect/pseuds/mixedwithintellect
Summary: the one where Y/N has an email and Harry is in a bed





	Have Yourself a Harry Christmas Part 0.5

The moonlight trickled into the room through slated blinds. The ghosted illusion of jail-cell bars streamed against the cream pillows on the bed, the scattered perfumes on the dresser, and the piled books on the desk. It was mostly quiet, although sometimes the noise of traffic outside the cluster of windows would rise above the standard, muffled hum, marking clearly the presence of intoxicated friends dancing away the blues of the week. It was a late Friday night.

Besides that, the room held its peace. The keyboard’s clacking had dulled into background noise and nothing broke the gentle vibe of a ‘late night haze’ for a while.

His voice was crusted with a thick sleep, as if he had been stirring between dreams and reality for quite some time, but Y/N could distinguish the sharp sense of annoyance that had led to the words being spoken. He was pissed but not awake enough to raise his voice above a grunt.

“Are you comin’ to bed?”

Y/N sat at the desk, her legs tucked up on the swivel chair and her sweater hanging down one shoulder. One earbud was in, and the music was quiet so as to not disturb his sleep, and her laptop was as dim as she could make it. Various websites and emails were up on her screen, a multitude of tabs cluttering the screen, and intermittently she would begin typing, pause, and then sigh in dissatisfaction, before clicking away onto social media.

It was late, she knew that. Or perhaps it was early at this point. She didn’t want to see the time, even put a piece of duct tape over that part of her screen so as not to tempt herself. She felt guilty already, at her lack of desire to go to bed. After all, he was there. In her apartment, after another wonderful night spent together, and now they wouldn’t have the joy of falling asleep in each other’s arms.

Most likely, if the night continued in the direction it had been, Y/N would wake up with her face smushed against the laptop. With the websites still pulled up, perhaps a sleep-derived tweet posted here or there.

She just couldn’t find it within her to go to bed. In the beginning, her body had fought back, sending waves of yawns to stretch her mouth and reaching her hand up to rub her eyes, but her mind was wide awake. And mind over matter, she’d stay up.

“Soon,” she promised in his general direction, her eyes briefly flickering over the top of her computer towards him, but it was as if she hadn’t said anything at all. He didn’t respond.

The room was quiet again, but the peace had left.

They had spent more nights together than not in the past month, with their closets slowly integrating and their morning routines broken up to accommodate the other’s needs. She wished she could go to bed, curl up against his chest, and wake up as he pressed soft kisses against the apples of her cheeks. Y/N wished it could be that simple, and that he wouldn’t get frustrated simply over the fact that she wasn’t next to him. It was sweet, definitely, but she just needed to do her own thing for the time being.

Sighing to herself, Y/N minimized all the tabs that had been open, except for the last one.

The most important one, the one that had been causing her grief since 8:00 pm that night. It was an email, which was not inherently strange, but the message was certainly unexpected.

And Y/N wasn’t sure how to deal with ‘unexpected’, especially when it had made her give an awful sort of squeak during his TV show, when she first saw it, and he had looked down, eyebrows furrowed.

“What is it?”

Y/N had immediately turned her phone off, tucking it against her chest as she gave him a soft smile. She gently kissed the underside of his jaw, feeling him hum with contentment, and shook her head.

“Just won my game of Sudoku. Tricky bastard, you know how it is.”

He had been satisfied with that response and pulled her in closer, mumbling something about how amazing it was he had landed himself such a smart girl.

The email was short, bitterly so - enough that it could’ve been a text, but instead was an email. The reasons behind that had bothered Y/N for hours, and she had tried almost everything to distract herself. A YouTube video of vine compilations was in front of her Twitter feed, which was in front of her Facebook feed, and her Hulu account was at the way back, in case she wanted to watch some Chopped. But not even her favorite show could stop her thoughts from going back to the fucking email.

Email was such an outdated concept, anyway. Might as well send a pigeon messenger her way, it would’ve reached the same conclusion. (Not really, but Y/N wasn’t feeling like being particularly rational. Not when she was left to her thoughts.)

With a slight twist of her swivel chair and a curled lip at her own weakness, she pulled the tab with the email back up. Y/N moved her cursor around the letters, mouthing them to herself as she propped up her face with one hand. She pushed her hips forward to scoot the chair, reaching up to grip onto the table to bring herself closer, so her heavy-lidded eyes didn’t have to squint further to see the screen.

She needed to form a response, both for the sake of the email and the grand scheme of communication, and for herself. It didn’t matter, what had happened almost two months ago, because that was  _then_  and this was  _now_.

Y/N realized her eyes had unfocused, zoned out over the end of the email. Shaking her head, she read it again, sitting up and moving her fingers to type out a reply. She wanted to sound casual, to not give off the impression that she had spent the last four hours bent over her laptop, avoiding this very interaction.

> _Yes! I’m free tomorrow. 10 am, Myrtle’s Coffee?_

Y/N kept looking at the screen, refreshing her emails as if a response would immediately register, which was unlikely because it was so late/early and she  _knew_  she would end up in this circle,  _damn_ , and-

She started.

A new email was within the list now, a stack of communications with a bold one on top. Because that’s how the system of email was  _created_ , but Y/N couldn’t help and add some extra, dramatic importance to the moment. Especially since her exhaustion had kicked in a bit, and her desk was looking rather inviting as a makeshift bed…

With one last look at the screen, Y/N’s hands reached out to close her laptop, the satisfaction of a response settling her tense shoulders a bit. The noise of the computer shutting stirred him a bit, on the bed, but he hummed some general ‘hmph’ and then the room was cloaked in silence once more.

The cold type of silence, the one that made Y/N question certain things about her life that really shouldn’t change. Stuff she couldn’t alter without changing who she was as a person, the late-night thoughts that had the tendency of tormenting everyone.

Y/N took out her earbud, dropping the headphones unceremoniously onto the desk as she stood up. Stretching out her limbs, curving backwards and letting out a small grunt of sleepiness, she padded over to the bed, flipping the comforter open so she could slide in. The analysis of the situation had, for the moment, left her brain – her mind had seemingly decided that it had gone through enough, and the rest could be sorted through in the morning.

Her cold toes meeting his legs caused him to shift, slightly, before allowing her to cuddle properly against his body. The familiar scent of woodsy trees and cinnamon made her heart flutter as she hid her grin against his warm skin.

“Night, Y/N,” he mumbled, the words bordering the barely-awake consciousness of someone barely stirred in their sleep, only half-registering her arms wrapping around his bare chest.

“Night, Spence.” she whispered, pressing a kiss on his chest and closing her eyes, allowing sleep to wash over her. It happened slowly, and then all at once, carrying her onward to tomorrow and all the uncertainty it held.

* * *

A few minutes before Y/N slid into bed, Harry Styles was on his phone, somewhere across town. The glow from the screen lit up his face, his eyes that were barely open and his lips that had become, within his murky thoughts, pursed and full in its pout. His cheek was against the silk sheets, his arms tucked up by his chest to hold his phone up as he hit “reply”, the comforter reaching up to his shoulder.

He wondered if he would be too fast in responding, but that would call up the concern that he would have something to be nervous  _about_. And Y/N was just a friend; it had happened a month ago - or was it two months, he couldn’t remember - and nothing had really stirred between them since then. But, the existence of those thoughts, was it a sign within itself that he hadn’t completely lost his feelings for her?

Harry was unsure.

He typed out his response to Y/N with his tongue poking out between his lips.

“See…yeh…then…” he whispered as he finished typing, and hit ‘send’ immediately. He turned off his phone and set it on the bedside table, next to the frustrating stack of unfinished songs, letting the darkness of the room expand out to him, as well.

With a deep sigh, Harry closed his eyes and ran his hand down his face, slumping down into his pillows. Tomorrow would be good, he decided, an opportunity to show to himself that he only felt complete platonic care for Y/N, and the desire to kiss her had been a one-time thing. It wouldn’t happen again, that was for sure.

It took a few minutes, but eventually, in the mesh of memories concerning books, gnomes, and axes, Harry shifted over on the bed. He yanked down the cord of his lamp, ignoring its clanging against the metal base, and reached down to the floor to pick up a pen he had tossed an hour ago, in his fit of writer’s block. Shuffling through the papers, he found the one he was looking for. Resting on his tummy, trying to blink the exhaustion away, Harry Styles began to write.

* * *

 **I’m back in town. Staying for a while. Hang out?**   **x.  
-H.**

_Yes! I’m free tomorrow. 10 am, Myrtle’s Coffee?_

**The usual? Sounds great. See you then.  
-H.**


End file.
